nikon 85mm f1.8

In photography stuff on 16 December 2009 tagged 35mm, 85mm, battery, casing, crack, d200, equipment, lens, nikon, pack, photography, portrait, prime, telephoto, travel, wide angle with 1 comment

the day i arrived in malay­sia i dumped my gear at the hotel and headed across town. my des­tin­a­tion was the local tech mall, where i went in search of a lens i’d been want­ing to buy — the nikon 85mm f1.8 prime.

since i star­ted trav­el­ing full time, i’d been car­ry­ing three lenses: 18-200mm f3.5–5.6 super­zoom, 35mm f2 prime, 11-16mm f2.8 ultra wide angle. in the 10 months of my jour­neys i had come to real­ise that i was not using the wide angle lens at all. it is a great lens, and very sharp for a third party lens, but i just didn’t get any chances to use it. i had also real­ised how much i was enjoy­ing por­trait photography.

so i made a decision — get a spe­cialty por­trait lens.

i bought the lens, pay­ing con­sumer prices (dam­nit!) … i’d had things too good in korea … and yes­ter­day i pos­ted the wide angle lens to christina in korea. she’ll sell the wide angle for me (get­ting a bet­ter price than i would have got in malaysia).

now i still have three lenses, two of which are primes. the 35mm will prob­ably be releg­ated to ‘not often used’ status, but it’s a very small lens and it’s ridicu­lously sharp. the 85mm is a touch faster and will get me closer to my sub­jects without scar­ing them off. lol

after using the lens for a few days, i’m very happy with it. rendi­tion is nice and images are very sharp. i’m happy with the lens and i’m look­ing for­ward to doing some intens­ive por­trait work with it.

in other cam­era news, i dropped my cam­era a few times and have broken the cas­ing. the cam­era case is metal, but i’ve man­aged to crack it around the bat­tery hous­ing. this means that the bat­tery doesn’t always fit snug­gly … it’s becom­ing a pain in the arse! what i might have to do is get in con­tact with a korean friend who is hold­ing a big bag of my stuff and ask him to send me the bat­tery pack that i have to fit the D200. i don’t like car­ry­ing it when i travel, because it makes the cam­era big­ger, heav­ier and more “obvi­ous” to poten­tial thieves. how­ever, the pack will also hold the bot­tom of the cam­era together … which is my biggest con­cern at the moment. damnit!!

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